Indian origin Preet Bharara to prosecute Times Square bomber Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad

Chidanand Rajghatta

Indian origin US Attorney Preet Bharara will prosecute Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who has allegedly admitted involvement in the New York Times Square bombing plot. According to a Times of India report, 41-year-old Bharara said on Tuesday that "the dedicated agents, detectives, and prosecutors in this case will continue to follow every lead and use every tool to keep the people of New York City safe" and vowed that "we will not rest until every terrorist, whether homegrown or foreign-based, is neutralized and held to account."

The youthful Bharara is the head of the US Attorney's office for the Southern District in New York, which has jurisdiction over Manhattan, where the Times Square bombing attempt took place, as well as JFK Airport, where suspect Shahzad was nabbed as he boarded a flight to Dubai. Under Bharara there are over 200 lawyers who handle some of America's most prominent cases, like trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the prosecution of Bernard L Madoff for his multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. He is also currently handling the prosecution against the Galleon Group, one of America's largest insider trading scam where the defendants include Sri Lankan Raj Rajaratnam and Indian-Americans Anil Kumar and Rajiv Goel. The job of delivering a conviction on 30-year-old Shahzad will fall on Harvard and Columbia-educated 'legal eagle' Bharara, who is one of the 93 US Attorneys appointed by the US President Barack Obama in May 2009, and in the months since, he has handled several high-profile prosecution cases including that of Ponzi scammer Bernie Madoff and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The arrest of a Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad by US law enforcement authorities in connection with the Times Square terror plot will once again put the focus on Preet Bharara, the India-born US Federal Attorney, who is already under attack in some Pakistani quarters for allegedly carrying out a "witch-hunt" against Pakistanis in the US.

But in a vicious attack some weeks back, a Pakistani newspaper accused Bharara of carrying out a witch-hunt against Pakistanis in the US because of his "ideological beliefs" going back to the sub-continent's partition days. The Nation newspaper also alleged that Bharara appointed a "like-minded controversial Indian who is also known for his hatred and venomous propaganda against Pakistan, Anjan Sahni, as Chief of the Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit soon after he assumed the charge of US Federal Attorney of New York."

Bharara, who was born in Ferozepur, Punjab, and moved to the US with his parents when he was only two, grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Harvard in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993 (which are also President Obama's alma mater), before embarking on a legal and political path where he was marked as a rising star very early in his career. Bharara's father is a Sikh and his mother is Hindu and they both moved from what became Pakistan to the Indian side during partition. But his father-in-law is a Muslim who moved in the other direction and his mother-in-law is from Palestine and is of Jewish origin.